Tacx Genius

Wirral_paul

Hi all

Has anyone bought or had a go on the latest Tacx Genius turbo trainer?? Its a seriously expensive bit of kit at nearly £1000 without the mulitplayer option and being pretty new out - there's not much info online about it.

Cheers
Paul

APIII

I've had one on order for a while. Expected delivery is mid December though. One of the selling points was the facility to download actual routes ridden from your gps, so you could ride them again on the trainer.

Mad Roadie

wonderful, but you dont need a genius to do that, TTS V3.5 has that functionality as a bolt on to a Fortius or i-magic

Wirral_paul

I'm very surprised to hear that its on back order for December!! There seems to be a few places advertising at being discounted down to £959 including Evans, Rutland Cycling etc.

So the iMagic at £500 just needs the latest software really then to do pretty much what the Genius does (ignoring the steering function and the wireless)??

Cheers
Paul

brettjmcc

Wirral_Paul, Yes the TTS software is actually the piece that does it. The difference is that the iMagic (Tacx Flow) has a slightly less powerful brake unit. See Tacx for their explanation

I bought my 18 month old Fortius for £300. Works fine and had it for 12 months now.

Fionnghal

I now have my Genius and there are certain things that bother me.

First, where the hell is the User Manual? Is it me or have I spend a grand on a piece of kit that comes with no explanation of what the parts are or do? I have a thing I put on the handlebars that seems to be called an interface but there is not so much as a diagram to explain what the four arrows are on the top or what colour of light should be showing. Now I'm exaggerating my lack of understanding of things a bit but it seems daft not to have so much as an explanation of what each part does, or even how you switch it on. I've always liked an instruction manual so I can work out what to do and then troubleshoot if it doesn't work. Tacx website has manuals for everything but the genius.

Second, I have loaded a couple of my own rides on from my Garmin Edge and can run them fine. BUT, on the virtual reality setting the view is as if you were actually on the road (what google earth would call street view). But on Real Life Training, although I get the google earth image, it is the aerial one so I get a picture as if I was flying over the top of things. Anyone know if you can get a street view on Real Life Training?

Last, anyone having problems with losing connectivity during a ride? If so, how did you resolve them?

Cheers

foggymike

You can't get streetview, just the top down view in google earth. This has been brought up on the Tacx forums so they are aware it would be good but the feeling seems to be it would be too jumpy to work properly and streetview isn't available in many non-urban areas making it a bit redundant for routes most would want to cycle. You're better off just getting the RLVs that appeal if you want this kind of training experience.

By connectivity do you mean your computer to the internet (for google earth) or the turbo to your computer?

rothers_bikeo

Prob better if you ask here:

http://forum.tacx.com/

Fionnghal

foggymike wrote:

By connectivity do you mean your computer to the internet (for google earth) or the turbo to your computer?

Mike, I meant turbo to computer. After a load of faffing about I eventually decided that winshield (that I got with my new laptop) was preventing the software from running properly. I ditched it entirely and it helped considerably, but I seldom get through a ride without losing ANT connectivity - either the interface switching off or the brake.

My next line of thought is that I have got my Garmin Edge speed/cadence sensor permanently on the bike I use on the turbo. Is it likely that "interference" from the Garmin sensor might cause the ANT system on the Tacx to disconnect?

jmmilligan

I have one that i haven't even been able to connect to my computer (i do have a Mac and know there have been issues but i am running parallels and windows 7. I am more unimpressed with the fact that the trainer came with nuts missing so i couldn't actually assemble it and then when i eventually got these from Tacx and i could not connect whatsoever, Tacx have been of no help whatsoever. Added to other experiences of Tacx quality control its fair to say i am not going to be a repeat customer! If anyone wants this unpacked, assembled but never used please let me know- yours posted to Uk for £750!

Fionnghal

That's a real shame. I have persevered with mine and I got some good advice from the people on the Tacx forum - both of which has resulted in it now working. It still has little quirks but I am of the opinion that Tacx are ironing out the software issues that are causing those.

Things I have had to do to get it working are:

# disable winshield as it was blocking something in the programme.
# stop a whole host of programmes from opening on start up and running in the background
# move the laptop to the front of the bike
# use a USB extension cable instead of connecting the USB stick straight into the laptop.

I am not sure if it was any one of the above that made the difference or the combination of them. But touch wood it is now working and I am enjoying using it. If you can be bothered, I'd try again, but I can well appreciate why you are hacked off with it.

Good luck if you try again.